Page:Science and Health.djvu/429

Rh sufferings also; but this is not so, if the body causes pain it can also cure it, but matter neither caused nor cured disease; not a gas accumulates, or a secretion takes place, or a combination occurs without mind. We admit the voluntary action of mind controls muscles, bones and nerves, but conclude, when these please to rebel against mind, as in case of lameness or contraction, they will not obey, however much we desire it, and mind has no more control over them; but this makes muscles and bones superior to man in one instance, and in another his servant, which is unnatural and not equal to the economy of human governments. If muscles are capable of action without the mind, we might say they are capable of inaction also, on this same premises, but not otherwise; and if they are able to inact of themselves at any time, they are at all times, and man has no control over them, and one state is as much their normal condition as the other; hence a stiffened joint or paralyzed limb is as natural as its opposite. But if mind controls muscles in one case, it does in all cases. When Shakespeare said, “Throw physic to the dogs,” I have some faith he added to the cast-aways, the belief of intelligent matter. Sometimes in fevers, consumptions, etc., the patient seems full of courage, and we say, “how calm he is; how can he be suffering from fear; his body is the victim of disease, but the mind is unmoved.” Mind that in sickness we deem tranquil, is frightened with its own images; fear heats the insensible body and dashes the blood in mad currents; but Christ, Truth, stills this tempest, with its “peace be still.” If disease can attack and control the body without man's consent, so can sin; both are error